AN: I just want to say thank you for the support on chapter one and for this book! You guys are the bestest! I know books can be slow to get into and sometimes the first couple chapters aren't as amazing as the rest, especially when you're waiting for weekly uploads, so thank you thank you thank you!!! 
Say hello to two new characters!!!!

Also: I LOVE when fight scenes and such have such an upbeat tempo to them (like the song above), I think it's such a fun and brilliant soundtrack to have when it's going on. So although you don't seen much fighting here, please imagine it in all its glory <3 

Was this death? 

Ringing ears. A splitting pain in her head.

Bonnie could feel the ground beneath her—the same old flooring that she stood on every day. Her hands moved to her eyes, wiping them hesitantly, not knowing if they truly wanted her to see.

She was still behind the counter. She'd recognise the dirty grout from anywhere, but the place was no longer the pale white she had become accustomed to, and any comfort she'd felt quickly vanished.

Was this blood? She looked down at herself and a scream bubbled up in her throat. There wasn't a square inch of her that didn't have at least one scarlet splatter sticking to it. She wanted to throw up.

"Oh my god," she whispered. "Is this mine?"

She could remember stories of people's adrenaline and not knowing the extent of their injuries. Is that what was happening to her? Was she missing a finger? A leg?

A crash from behind cut off the thoughts that had begun to consume her.

Bonnie pulled her legs into her, briefly relieved that she did indeed have all her limbs, but wishing that she was half the size. If that thing was to peer over far enough, there was nothing she could do. She pressed herself into the cupboards harder. She could only hope.

As she listened, whispering requests to not die, new noises made that hope dwindle and she tried not to cry.

Someone else was here.

Had it brought friends? Was there a swarm of them only a few feet away, ready to tear her into enough pieces to share? She prayed that some poor, unexpected customer hadn't just walked straight into their death.

She strained her ears, barely able to keep her own breath steady enough to listen.

Grunts. Blows. And was that... a chuckle?

With wobbling arms and a curiosity that overpowered her, she rolled onto her knees and slowly stretched up to the height of the counter, her eyes trying to make themselves taller. If she could just get high enough to see what was going on—

Something flew past the top of her head, barely missing her. The room erupted into a pained noise that made the hairs on Bonnie's arms rise as she spun back down to her hiding spot. She cowered, bracing herself against the deafening cry, with her mouth agape at what was pinned to the wall.

One skeletal limb hung from the flowered wallpaper, its clawed fingers still splayed in a move to attack. But holding it there, shining with a glow that seemed rather unearthly, was a golden arrow.

Was that still a weapon that anyone in this century used?

Her finger twitched with the urge to investigate. Surrounded by ladles and pots of sugar, it seemed even more absurd than it should have. But behind her, the guttural, agonising wail shrunk away so quickly that she had to take a moment to check that she hadn't gone deaf.

Shuffling from the other side confirmed she hadn't, as well as instilling a new fear into her bones.

What was powerful enough to get rid of that thing? Or had it overpowered them, too?

She listened with bated breath, waiting for a sign that they had left, but she only heard them make their way across the room, chairs scraping as they went in the complete opposite direction.

Trying to figure out a solution to her ever-growing problem, Bonnie didn't hear the plug in the television being re-inserted and only noticed the echo of it playing when a whining voice carried over to her.

"Why would you attack anyone while they're watching this film? It's a classic?"

Out of all the things Bonnie thought she was going to hear—a growl of a beast, an alien language that she didn't know, even the chants of a forgotten civilisation lost to time—the last thing she predicted would have been the slightly annoyed tones of a man.

"You say that about every Keira Knightley film."

Two of them.

"Name me a bad Keira Knightley film and then tell me I'm wrong."

Bonnie stared at the floor in front of her in confusion, her brain ticking over the possibilities of who these men were. Or what they were.

All she knew was that they had to be dangerous—nothing good could have more strength than that thing she saw. But where was she meant to go? She doubted she could outrun them, and how much of a phone call could she make in silence?

The voice that sounded further off brought her from her cloud of thoughts.

"Could you just stop talking and do something useful, like get my arrow?"

Panicked eyes darted up to the glimmering bolt sticking out from the tile and, in an instant, every idea flew from Bonnie's brain.

Without taking a second to double guess what she was doing, she let her body go slack and fell to the ground, purposely splaying her arms out in a way that looked unnatural.

It may be viewed as the coward's way, but covered in blood and stuck with nowhere to go, she'd hope that no one looked too closely. All she had to do was hold her breath long enough and keep any expression from her face. If she was lucky, they'd leave, and she'd live to work another boring day.

With grumbles of resistance, the footsteps made their way over to her side of the counter, the unenthusiastic shuffle of them stopping suddenly as she came into view.

"Oh shit, looks like it didn't have time to eat its meal."

It took everything Bonnie had to stay still and not let a cry of horror leave her lips at his words. Instead, she gritted her jaw the tiniest amount and ignored the burning sensation taking over her lungs.

"Must not have been tasty enough," a voice joked flatly, and the other person snorted. "Can we keep to schedule, please?"

There was nothing more that Bonnie wanted to do than look at the person who had crouched beside her feet, but she kept it together.

"I don't know," the voice mused. "She's got a little something-something."

If she wasn't scared for her life and quickly slipping into an agonising choke, Bonnie might have smiled at the comment.

"Well then, maybe you should eat her." A light touch grazed her ankle.

Before she knew it, she was clambering into the corner of the counters, her hands frantically grabbing anything she could. She pointed the item out blindly in front of her, her chest heaving. The crouched figure smiled.

"You held out a while. That was pretty impressive."

She didn't expect him to look so normal. In a situation where she wasn't riddled with adrenaline and shaking in fear, she might have got nervous for a completely different reason. He had a soft, rounded face, and eyes that reminded her of a cloudless morning sky. His lips that curved into an easygoing smile somehow made the frantic beating of Bonnie's heart slow down a pace.

She glanced over his body, looking for extra limbs or weapons for hands, but all she could see was someone who clearly worked out more than her.

"How did you know I was still alive?" she whispered, keeping her gaze on him.

The man's lips pulled to the side slightly, as if sorry to explain.

"Well, when people try the whole—I'm dead and covered in blood thing—there's usually at least one other body beside them to make it look realistic or to camouflage them."

Oh.

"And there's usually blood... not ketchup."

A few moments ticked by, the words settling into Bonnie's brain.

"Ketchup."

"Ketchup," the blonde replied, looking down at the item in her hand with a smile, "It's completely reasonable you thought it was blood—I've seen people make the same mistake with brown sauce, so at least yours was the correct colour."

Finally, understanding that what she was holding was, in fact, a broken bottle and that the liquid dripping out of it was the same as the stains on her body, Bonnie let go of her 'weapon' and cleared her throat.

"I clearly panicked," she stated deadpanned, her embarrassment taking over her survival instincts as she leaned back, closing her eyes for a brief moment. "I do great under pressure, obviously."

The man in front of her tutted, pulling her eyes back open as he waved away her comment.

"I think you did pretty well, considering you're still alive," he offered kindly, standing to full height. He held a hand out to her. "Few people live to tell the tale."

Thoughts of panic left her body the more they watched each other, and it felt almost natural to take his hand and pull herself up with him. He was being so gentle with her, and so understanding of the situation she had just went through.

She smiled hesitantly, not knowing quite what to say.

"Maybe next time use a better weapon than chips, though. You know, unless you actually want to die."

Bonnie had been so distracted by the man in front of her, she'd completely forgotten that there was another person in the room—one who clearly wasn't as kind as the first.

"I wasn't using the chips, I was trying to use the hot oil, thank you very—"

Bonnie's words cut short as she found the owner of the sarcastic voice.

Hunched over the black mass on the floor, surveying it for whatever reason, he unfurled and stood. Where her first saviour seemed to shine and welcome her in, this man felt like he was threatening her to come nearer. He wasn't much taller than his friend, but his limbs looked like they had continued growing long after his body had stopped. His long arms reminded her of the creature's, and his black hair was like the tar it oozed.

"Well, that was pretty smart." The blonde man offered an encouraging smile to Bonnie. "That would—"

"Have done nothing. It was immune to heat, so you'd have given it a spa day," the second interrupted, yanking something from the heap on the ground. His expression was almost bored as he turned to look fully at her, taking in her uniform and frightened face. "You'd have been better using the cold."

Before Bonnie could even open her mouth to explain her fridge idea, he'd cut her off again.

"Although, unless you had a canister or two of liquid nitrogen, I doubt you'd have fended him off for very long. Made his meal drag out a little longer, perhaps."

There goes that plan.

She crossed her arms. "So what you're saying is that no matter what I did, I should have died about ten minutes ago."

His shoulders shrugged. "Pretty much."

The bluntness of his voice instilled a new feeling in Bonnie, the concrete weight of the truth pulling her chest and making it almost painful for her to breathe. Her head nodded once in understanding but then kept going, as if she'd got stuck on the words and could not move past them.

She should be dead.

"What was it?" she asked eventually, her eyes almost glazed with shock. "Why me?"

A thousand thoughts flooded through the panicked girl's head, her mind stretching with all sorts of ideas: rituals, spells, curses. Was the building built on sacred ground that spat out monsters every decade? Was she destined to fight the things that haunted the real world? Or was it simply the wrong place at the wrong time?

An uninterested hand wiped itself on their leg, brushing away her assumptions.

"Because you're completely unimportant and forgettable—nothing happens if you die."

She wondered if the sound of her heart cracking was audible.

A soft hand pressed into her shoulder with a sigh, a slightly annoyed tone slipping in. "I'm sorry, what my friend means by that is—"

"We're not friends."

"Are you seriously going there right now?"

His hand disappeared as they bickered, their voices tumbling together and becoming deaf to Bonnie, who was still trying to process the words thrown at her so casually.

Completely unimportant and forgettable.

Had she ever had something so horrible said about her before? She'd been called an orphan, unloveable, fat, stupid beyond compare. She'd even been told she was as much a disappointment as a failure, but this seemed to hit her the most.

"We don't have time for this," the same voice stated, storming past her as he yanked out the weapon still pinned into the wall. "Do the security cameras work?"

She heard him, but the poor girl's eyes were stuck on the scorch-like mark left on the wall and the absence of the limb that had just been hanging there. It had evaporated in the time that she blinked.

With a sigh of impatience, the man repeated his question, this time louder.

"They work," she meekly mumbled, forcing herself to speak. "But I doubt they're switched on."

Was this all in her imagination?

"You're sure?" he pressed, ignoring his partner, who whispered for him to be a little more gentle.

"Yeah," Bonnie snorted, her mind still a step away, "If there's one thing I can depend on, it's Isabel making sure she can't get caught skiving."

The blonde's face contorted into an amused expression at her words, as if impressed by the slight snark sneaking into them. The other only grunted in a note of satisfaction and then walked back into the mass of tables where he seemed to peruse the scene.

"Good. With the windows smashed and food everywhere, it already looks like a typical crime scene. Saves us the work."

The fog over her dwindled sharply as Bonnie repeated the conversation that they'd just had in her head.

No cameras.

Crime scene.

No one would care if she died.

"You're going to kill me, aren't you?"

There was almost a resolve to Bonnie's words. They didn't hang like a question, but a statement that she'd seemed at peace with. Maybe it was because she knew she was already meant to be dead.

"No, we're not," the kind one quickly answered, making his words loud enough to be heard over the quiet 'maybe' from the other side of the room, "We just need to make sure that this all looks normal."

"He said crime scene," Bonnie retorted, making him roll his eyes.

"He's a little dramatic," he whispered under his breath, his grin only widening the longer he spoke, "He doesn't mean a murder-blood-spattered-death crime scene of such, more like a drunken-hooligans-trash-cafe sort of thing—you know?"

For the second time that night, Bonnie had no idea why she felt as though she could trust him, but she did, and she felt her nerves ease a little.

"But we will probably have to knock you out or tie you up."

The smiling face above her quickly changed into a frustrated one at his friend's words.

Bonnie's heart began to race again.

"You're going to what?"

Taking a step back from the friendly figure she'd trusted before, her eyes darted between the two of them. "Why would you do that?"

"Just so you have an alibi," he assured, his lips stretching into a tight smile as he no doubt mumbled explicits at the person behind him, "The police would question you a lot if they thought you just sat through something like that, and we don't want you to get overwhelmed and maybe share some things you shouldn't."

"Like what?" Bonnie asked incredulously, "How would I ever begin to explain what happened when you guys haven't even tried to tell me what that thing was?"

"And that's exactly why we haven't."

Bonnie felt her heartbeat flooding through her and panic set in. How would she know they wouldn't kill her as soon as she became incapacitated? Could she even do anything about it if she wanted to? If they'd killed that thing, then what could she possibly do to stop them?

Being so caught up in her worries and stressing, she didn't notice that the dark figure of the two had orbited around the room, slowly circling until he'd managed to get right behind her.

Bonnie blinked at the blonde, swallowing any words of pleading that she had. They felt futile when the power of her opponents seemed unmatched.

"I don't even know your names," she bubbled, searching his face for any sign of compromise, "And even if I did, I'd have no one to tell."

The blonde's eyes softened, but any response fell on deaf ears as she crumpled forward into his arms, her body dropping without a fight.

"Was that necessary? You could have waited a second," he hissed over her head as he fumbled, trying not to touch her anywhere inappropriate.

"We don't have a second," grumbled the second man, sheathing his arrows with a resounding clink, "And she was only getting more scared by the minute."

"I know but—"

"We need to go. Just put her down in the spot you found her and let's move. Chop chop!"

Knowing that his partner couldn't be argued with, the man obeyed the orders. Gently, placing her on the floor behind the counter where she had previously hidden, he positioned her in a way that coincided with the splatters all over the area.

"She just looked so sad," he mumbled, watching the way her lips had curved into a slight frown and remembering the hollow look. "She seemed so lonely."

"They're all lonely," the other replied curtly. "That's what makes them the targets. We just rarely see them alive."

Standing to his feet, and brushing his hands on his dark trousers, the figure sighed. "I suppose you're right."

"I am. Now let's go before someone walks in and sees us. I'd rather not have to knock out another human. It's beneath me."

The blonde rolled his eyes at the man who had already left the building and straightened his jacket, following his trail towards the exit and making sure not to step on broken glass along the way.

"Yeah, because that was the difficult part of today." 

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See you guys next Friday!!